False memories and Surprise: Round #3

Three experiments examined the links between feeling of surprise and a false memory phenomenon,
the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) effect. In DRM paradigm, subjects studied lists of related words (NIGHT, DREAM, etc.) that were associated with non-presented critical word (e.g., SLEEP) for which high false recognition rate is after noted. Whittlesea et al. (2005) proposed that false recognition results when a feeling of surprise comes from a discrepancy between subject’s expectation about processing fluency and real processing fluency. When Whittlesea and coll. have provided a range of evidences for this account, Roediger and coll. (in press) found that subjects were not surprised when they encountered non-presented critical word during recognition test. We explained these discrepant findings by methodology differences between these two studies. Whittlesea et al. noted that various procedures that eliminate surprise eliminate the false memories. However, they used a modified DRM procedure (e.g., RSVP presentations). In contrast, Roediger and coll. used a classical DRM procedure but did not eliminate surprise feeling. Rather, they investigated whether subjects experienced the critical word as surprising by asking them to make judgments of surprise on a recognition test. In this study, we used various procedures that eliminate surprise like Whittlesea but we used classical DRM paradigm like Roediger. Experiment 1 replicates the DRM effect. Experiment 2 & 3 shows that the DRM effect is decreased but not abolished when participants are prevented from being surprised by critical word. It is proposed that experience of surprise participate to DRM effect, but not alone.